Smoking is one of the most harmful behaviors to human health. It is identified as a major contributing factor to a series of diseases, which entail significant health risk. Such diseases include but are not limited to various kinds of cancer, cardiovascular conditions, bronchitis, pneumonia; asthma, and emphysema. Estimations from the Center for Disease and Control (CDC) put cigarette-smoking related deaths in the US at about 440,000 per year. In addition to the harm to human health, smoking also causes enormous economic loss. According to the CDC's estimate, cigarette smoking was responsible for $193 billion in annual health-related economic losses during 2000-2004 in the United States.
The current invention employs a novel approach to facilitate a person's effort to quit smoking. The anti-smoking device introduced by the current invention focuses on restricting a person's physical access to cigarettes and providing constant reminder and stress relief to the person. The device is a small, inexpensive accessory that can be worn by a person who is trying to quit smoking on his/her hand. By wearing the device, the user will have significant difficulty in clutching a cigarette. In addition, the user may squeeze the device for stress relief and craving control. Moreover, since many instances of failure to quit started with a casual smoke, sometimes under the urging of a friend or acquaintance, the anti-smoking device of the current invention also serves to remind the person who is trying to quit as well as his/her friends that a conspicuous effort to quit smoking is under way while disturbance of that effort is unwelcome. In summary, the anti-smoking device disclosed by the current invention is an apparatus that restricts a wearer's physical access to cigarettes as wells as a behavioral mechanism tool that helps the wearer to change his/her habits.
Previous anti-smoking approaches focus mostly on aiding the person trying to quit through chemical intervention, such as pharmaceutical products, or psychological encouragements, such as advertising campaigns. The current invention employs a novel approach to facilitate a person's efforts to quite smoking. The device and method disclosed herein prevents the person from clutching a cigarette in a casual manner. Moreover, by wearing the device, the person trying to quit demonstrates the resolve to quit smoking, reducing the chance he/she is to be subjected to peer pressure to starting to smoke.
In terms of structure of the device, some pervious patents or publications have disclosed devices that can be worn on a person's hand. However, not only do the prior arts serve completely different functions, they also have distinctive structures from the current invention.